Dive Brief:
- The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has released a report that identifies health gaps within states through data from its County Health Rankings and Roadmaps, a joint project operated with the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.
- RWJF's analysis compares each state's counties against its healthiest county, but intentionally does not look at comparisons between states.
- The aim was to identify opportunities available within each state to bring every county to the health level of its healthiest county, and to note how many deaths could be avoided by doing so.
Dive Insight:
The foundation sought to highlight local county comparisons because people already know there are major differences between state health levels, the researchers say -- and because most attention toward the health of residents in the least healthy counties comes from local communities, not higher levels of government.
“Americans love rankings,” Bridget Catlin, director of the program at the Population Health Institute, was quoted by Modern Healthcare. “But we wanted to identify opportunities toward providing everybody a fair chance to be their healthiest and how many deaths could be avoided if every county could be as healthy as the healthiest.”